“Put your own mask on first”
Jennifer Wright Cook
Interviewed on September 19th, 2022
by Anabella Lenzu
Anabella: Thank you so much, Jennifer, for sharing your life and your ideas about being an artist and director in The Field for so many years. You direct many other artists and help us all while being a mom, so I am curious. How do you deal with all of this?
Jennifer: One thing I feel very clear about, particularly since I'm no longer in my role, is the amount of privilege I had, being a boss, to create a culture, for myself and for other people, and for moms in particular, and for parents, that is supportive and empowering of having a life outside the workplace. I'd like to think that most of the people who worked for me, worked with me, would say there was always space. Whether it's about an illness or a pregnancy, or a life change, Jennifer and the team made space for us to live our full lives. That’s a conscious leadership choice. I don't think I started that way, with that kind of knowledge, but I grew into it. Where the world is going, businesses and leaders are aware of the importance of that kind of spaciousness. Not just with COVID, but with the racial justice reckoning and where we're at, politically, as a country right now.
I like to think and I hope that there's more abundance and more graciousness, generosity, humility, and openness to people leading their full lives. But even today I heard this podcast and this guy was speaking and he was talking about their return to work. I don't know if this man has kids or what his situation was, but he was basically talking about how many people loved working from home for creative practice. He said you have to really match the task of work to the space. He was talking about business people, right? He's not talking about artists, but he was saying, when you have to do deep thinking and creative work, it's better to be at home. People have to be at home where they have peace and quiet. And I thought, have you talked to any women with little kids?
I enjoyed working from home for many reasons, but I felt my daughter was just always there. There was less space for me and I craved my private office. I craved the people I worked with and I craved some privacy for myself to be able to do my work. I feel that it is important for leaders, whether choreographers, artistic directors, executive directors, or senior leadership folks, to be upfront and to listen to the needs of the people that they're working with. What do you need? How do we accommodate, within reason, because you're working for a larger group, whatever that is, or collective, we have to listen to each other and make space for that. I'll be honest when I think back to my tenure at The Field, it wasn't until one staff member got pregnant, that was the first staff member I had who had gotten pregnant, I hadn't had kids at that point and I felt this panic. I thought, what are we going to do? How are we going to manage this? And then there was also the logistics –– we had no maternity leave policy at that point. I didn't know what happened with our insurance. I didn't know anything about it, so we had to do a lot of research. We ended up giving her maternity leave, paid not fully, but I believe three months, something paid, and we figured it out it was fine. I remember when she came back to work and she had her breast pump and all that. I didn't understand until I was a mom how hard it is to come back, not just the breastfeeding and the pumping, but just how hard it is to leave your baby. Three months maternity leave is nothing! It's nothing! And if you have any medical or emotional issues with your pregnancy or postpartum. Which workplaces are not just amenable or tolerant, but supported in a deeper way for moms coming back to work. I'm hopeful that there's more of a reckoning in terms of how space is made for women. I made some mistakes, but I learned.
Anabella: But we learn!
You mentioned that it changed you to become a mom, in so many ways –– you as a leader, but also as a person, could you talk about these changes, Jennifer?
Jennifer: I was more focused in my work. Suddenly I was more efficient, more focused in a certain way, but I was also more relaxed. I let things go more. I stopped sweating some of this small stuff. I was able to just think more big picture. I've often thought of my life in two chunks: my dance life and then my arts administration life. After a while at The Field, I started to realize that I had cut off my creative self, and also my femininity, and my softer self. Somehow I felt, being the boss of something meant I had to become tough. The board was mostly men, and men with money and a lot of white men. I felt I had to show that I had a business head–– and I felt this pressure. Most of it was in my head, but definitely, some things came from men on the board in particular. I felt, “Oh, they think I'm not working hard enough. I'm not doing as good of a job.” There was that feeling of if you're not working 80 to 100 hours a week on your job, then you're not performing. It was subtle and there were never any threats against my job –– nothing big. It was mostly me being nervous about that, but there was definitely some subtlety from the corporate men, and I had to really battle that in myself. The fact that because my daughter and I are a family by adoption, obviously that's a different entry point into motherhood, but I took time off. We had a leave policy at that point. My husband and I took time off, and that truthfully gave me so much more space to come back to work fresh, which people forget the importance of taking a break from your practice. Does that answer your question?
Anabella: Yes, absolutely. I remember when I went to Beth Israel, what is now Mount Sinai, and they gave us a tour of the hospital. I was pregnant with Lucy, my first child, and they said to me that the United States is number three in the world for being the most unfriendly for families. I was like “What do they mean?” After 13 years, I know what they mean. The culture, especially in New York, is to be a workaholic. It becomes a problem when you have a relaxing time or you take time off to raise your kids. What is more important in life?
Jennifer: Exactly. What is more important? Like I said at the top of this session, most people that I've worked with in The Field, I hope, would say we had a healthy life-work balance and that I modeled that as a leader. I don't know if that coincided with my daughter being born, but I also had other women in the sector, reminding me to take a vacation and put your own mask on first. You've got to be the executive director. If you're not healthy and strong, then the organization will suffer. I really endeavored to model that and make that possible for everyone who works at The Field. It wasn't just people who have been there a while or men or women or whatever. How do we support whatever your life needs?
Anabella: Who were these leaders?
Jennifer: One woman I remember who first said to me, “Put your own mask on first,” in terms of leadership, was a woman named June Choi, a mom. She was a single mom at the time and she was an art consultant and capacity consultant. I became a proselytizer for vacation. I would just really start bragging about it, saying “I'm going to take a vacation.” Everyone needs to take a vacation. We started doing sabbaticals around that time and offering paid sabbaticals for folks over eight years at The Field. This was a shift to having other people give support, out loud, to gathering mothers and the community.
Anabella: What do you consider to be a “good mother”?
Jennifer: I just had dinner with my mom last night and she said I was a helicopter mom, then we started talking about the generational differences in how people parent. For me, the mother I want be is primarily focused on seeing my daughter –– just seeing her and being present to her. Who is she? Does she see me seeing her? Does she see that I am with her and supporting her and on her team and adore her? Does she see me loving her? Does she get it in her body? In her bones? In her heart? I know that when I'm working too much, I'm too distracted to really be present. It's not just about time, because you can do it in 5 minutes or you can do it in 10 minutes, but to really see her and be present for her. That's one of the things I really just strive for.
It's not lost on me that I don't think my mom was that way with me, and I don't think that would be how she would define good motherhood, but that's really important to me –– to really see her my daughter and be present for her.
One of the things that feel so much more present in parenting now is discussions about consent and bodies –– with dance in particular –– and body autonomy. I also think being a good mother means helping my daughter feel her feelings, express herself, and say what she needs, what she wants, and where she's at. And those are both about body autonomy. Broadly speaking, about sexuality, for her to be brave and safe and courageous in her full self. That's what I want as a good mom, to help her, whatever her path is. She's brave and safe and she trusts herself and feels confident.
I don't know. What do you think is a good mom?
Anabella: For me, it also means being present and accompanying them. Sometimes you feel this guilt –– I did a dance film that is all about the guilt you feel when you need to leave your kid.
I remember pumping, even in public, coming from Staten Island. I would wake up at 4:00 AM just to pump and then I would take this subway and go teach. I worked in a college. Then when I was coming back, people would look at me pumping in the ferry like what is going on? I was covering myself with a tent.
What is to be a good mom? It’s to be with them. Especially in this American society. In Argentina, you are always surrounded by your family, but this is not the case here. I feel in the big city, many people are isolated. Even in their own family, they don't see each other. One comes in, the other one goes out.
I make the effort of spending time together, we’re going to the museum together and then we’ll go see soccer. Someone will always get bored, but we have to be a team and have dinner together. No TV when we are having dinner and board games, etc.
Especially, when you choose to be a mom…you choose to be a mom and I choose to be a mom. The responsibility… the world is crazy!
Fiamma told me the other day, she goes to Ballet Tech, “Oh, we're gonna have the first fire drill and lockdown drill” And she asked me, “Mom, did you have these things growing up?” I told her, no, I never had a fire drill because in Argentina, everything is made of cement brick. We never have crazy people coming with guns.
How do you grow up with this in your mind and lose your last year? It was last year, in February, the DOE in this school here in Williamsburg came with a metal detector and found out that kids have guns, BB guns, and we talked about it. It's a fancy neighborhood here, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but there are still guns inside public schools –– little gangs, fighting for nothing. And I'm thinking, “Where do they get these guns?” Where are their parents?
So it’s about being present. That is so important, because of this dialog, right? And they know that they can talk about anything with you. They trust you.
Jennifer: Exactly. I hope that my daughter trusts me. I hope she trusts that I have her back and that she can tell me and share, and I will protect her and do my best for her and that emotional-grounding relationship.
Anabella: My choregraphic project is, “Listen to your mother.”What are the things that you listen to from your mom and the things that you don't listen to from your mom?
Jennifer: My daughter was born when I was 46 and there are lots of reasons for the delay in motherhood for me. I don't know in terms of listening to my mom and I really mean this, of course, I love my mom, but she hasn't been that guide for me. Someone asked me the other day if I thought my mom was confident, and I don't feel I know my mom, or if she knows me, we're so different. I don't know that I would ask her for advice. I have a trusted female circle of three friends that I feel mother me and I mother them. And my husband, too. They are a kind of substitute, and that's not easy to say. That's one of the reasons why I feel so clear about my daughter too. I want it to be different. My mom's a good person. My kind of quintessential image of my mom is that she had 3 kids. I have 2 older sisters, I'm the youngest, and my mom had the 3 of us by the time she was 25. She was a young mom. She and my dad were high school sweethearts. They didn't have much money in the beginning. He was a marine and, my quintessential image of my mom is, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, skinny as a stick, wearing a little tennis skirt. She's got a cigarette in her mouth, I'm at her boob, my other sister on her waist, and my other sister is in her hand, and then there's a birthday cake. She's also holding, somehow, a birthday cake, and she is exhausted, chain-smoking, three kids in 4 years, from soup to nuts by the time of 25. My daughter was born when I was 46. I'm in a completely different world. I have worked my entire life. My mom worked as a mom. She didn't really work outside the home, it was very different. And that doesn't mean that she doesn't have good advice, but we're not close in that way and I don't turn to her for that. And that has absolutely driven my parenting.
Anabella: Well, same thing with me. My mom was always at home, she drove us to all the activities. That's why I was a good dancer, because she drove me around, and fed me and the changing of clothes and the discipline and everything. But when I talk to my mom about being an artist, she looks at me, asking, “Why? What? Why are you doing this”. There’s no connection to giving advice. That's why these interviews are so important. Also, our moms are not perfect, each one has their own life, right? And they live their own experience, but it's completely different. For you, you are a leader, your mom didn't have the experience to create a work and what this means and the pressure outside. They had another kind of pressure. Personally, I would go crazy if I needed to be home with the kids all the time. I would be a bad parent.
Jennifer: I would go insane. I would be a terrible parent. Terrible. I have no interest in being a full-time stay-home mom.
Anabella: I look at my mom when we, my sister is also a flamenco dancer, so when we left home, she was in a total depression. She needed to go to therapy because she didn't know what to do with her life because we were her life. I knew I didn’t want this to happen to me. I need to have my own life besides the kids, but as you mentioned, you don't know how to prioritize it.
Jennifer: I think of you absolutely wearing both hats very fully; your artist hat and your mom hat. You always ask me about my daughter, and tell me about your kids, it's not something you dismiss. You live in both, it’s beautiful.
Anabella: It is hard for me to reconcile this division, like you mentioned, sometimes you feel your creative life and the administrator's life is divided. For me, if the kids come, they need to be integrated and come to rehearsal. It's going to be a struggle to try to concentrate, but they see that part of my life.
Jennifer: I was just thinking about stories I've heard about, particularly in the ballet world, where if someone brought their baby and they were breastfeeding in the corner, the artistic director would have a fit. These are our bodies. We have no babies if we don't do this. When I was growing up as a young dancer, my teachers had kids. I knew they had kids, but there was no discussion, there was no sort of modeling around the need to go breastfeed right now. It was all hidden and quiet. Which, also kind of plays into that, particularly in the ballet world, because of your body. How's your body going to change?
Anabella: Exactly. Half of us in my training years were bulimic and anorexic. Imagine thinking about a baby. In Argentina, we still have the Russian models for the audition; they measure you and everything to determine whether you get into these special schools or not. So out of 1,000 kids, only 30 or 60 get in. I remember after I got in, after the audition, I started crying, and my mom asked me, ‘Why are you crying, aren’t you so happy?” I said, “No, I’m so sad because I know if I devote my life to dance I won’t be able to be a mom,” and I was young then. Although I was young, I knew I perceived the total devotion to my body. I knew it. How did you decide at 46 to be a mom, and why not earlier?
Jennifer: I studied mostly ballet growing up. I grew up in Westchester and I started going to the city early to dance in high school. When I was graduating, one of my very good friends said to me, “Hey, Alvin Ailey is having auditions this weekend for a scholarship program. We should go.” And I asked, “Who's Alvin Ailey?” I didn't know anything and I went and it just changed my life. It was the first time I danced barefoot. I was in a majority non-white environment. It exploded my life in the best way. I ended up at Ailey for, probably close to 8 years, in waves. I went to college, but then I dropped out to focus on dance at Ailey when I was 21. Ailey had mandatory weight checks every Tuesday.
Anabella: I didn't know that. This is what year?
Jennifer: In the late 80’s - early 90’s. I was there from around 1987 through 1993. We were weighed every Tuesday and you could hear, in the bathrooms, everyone throwing up before the weight check. Everyone, myself included. That’s just what you did. And when I was about 21, again, you're in, in class, you stand sideways, you're always looking at your belly, and my body started to feel weird. I was thinking something was not right for me. I'm not feeling good. I smoked at the time, but my body was not feeling good and I was looking at my stomach, thinking, what's wrong with me? Is it indigestion? Something is not right. I started taking diuretics, all kinds of pills. I'm lying down on the floor one day, warming up for class, and talking to my best friend. I'm lying with my hands on my belly, and something doesn't feel right. My friend puts her hand on my belly and I was like, I'm just so bloated. That day I went and got a pregnancy test, and I was pregnant. I had no freaking clue. I had no idea because my period had always been sporadic because I was so thin. I had a boyfriend but we had broken up. We had random intercourse one time and I never thought I would get pregnant. I was so out of touch with my body. As a dancer, you're so in touch with your body but I was out of touch with my body. And, of course, after I realized I was pregnant, a couple of folks in my inner circle were like, “You were looking bloated and no one wanted to say anything.” Long story short, I terminated the pregnancy. It was never a question for me to have a baby at that point in my life, but it was other things too. I wanted to dance. I was very pro-choice. This is not the right time for me to have a baby, not with this guy who is not the right relationship. I also felt I had been doing bad things to my body, so I don't even know what I've done to this potential baby. I don't even know because I was smoking and all those things.
After that, I wouldn't say I thought I would be a mom at some point. I had some relationships that were headed in that direction, marriage and kids, but they didn't pan out. I kept thinking, it will work out when the time is right. And then the time just passed. And like many women also, I really was feeling my hormonal urges very strongly, but I wasn't in a relationship. So my best friend, who was also in a similar boat, said, let's try to get pregnant. We can do IVF, etc. I tried for quite some time to get pregnant on my own. I was still not in a relationship, and that didn't pan out for me. My body was really full of fibroids and just not receptive to getting pregnant. Shortly after, I started a committed relationship, but I still knew I wanted to be a mom. It definitely shifted, because I was just getting older. It wasn't as hormonal, but I very much wanted to be pregnant. When I thought about it, as I was older and not a biological mom, I definitely had to grieve not getting pregnant. It was something I wanted to see, truthfully, to see if I could do it. There's something about it that I wanted to experience in my life, and I still grieve that. It's part of the process, but I knew I wanted to be a mom. I asked my partner and he said, “Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s adopt, life is life.”
Yes, but the privilege of that choice and that I could wait that long –– it's not cheap. It's a lot of money. To address the question of where I want to go now in my career, I have learned so much about who gets to make what choices in this country, in particular, to postpone motherhood or to freeze your eggs and money and class and race. That's really driving what I want to do next, and I'm learning about how racism impacts every level of motherhood, maternal impacts, health impacts, everything. I feel it's all part of the piece.
Anabella: In this country, they even go back and consider, “Oh, abortion does not need to be legal.” I guess we’re going back to prehistoric times –– some things are fast forward and the other things are deciding over what you do to someone's body.
Jennifer: Yes, it’s shocking. It's not shocking. There's a lot of work to do.
Anabella: As a mom, how do you feel about talking about these things? Your daughter is 8.
My daughter is also the same age, 9. I don't know how I'm going to talk about these things when the time comes.
Jennifer: I see the stats –– girls are getting their period when they're 10 or 11.
Anabella: Yes, exactly. Because all of the food has an impact on us, but they are not prepared, psychologically or emotionally.
Jennifer: It's interesting too, in terms of talking to kids and girls in particular, well, I guess all kids, about what's going on in the country right now. Obviously, as always, what's age-appropriate. Adoption is very complicated with this issue, because a lot of the right-wing who are anti-choice, often hold up adoption as, “Well, you don't have to have an abortion, just give the baby up for adoption.” It's not the answer. They are two entirely different things. People have said to me, they’ll ask ridiculously personal questions about adoption without understanding the boundaries and sort of personal boundaries. People have said to me, why didn't my daughter's birth mother have an abortion? Why didn't she do that? Like, shut up it’s none of your fucking business. I don't know the answer, that's her story. Some people think adoption is an alternative to abortion, and it's not. They're very different things and it's not about one or the other. So being a very pro-choice person and pro-adoption and understanding the possibilities of how to give women more choices and more opportunities, through work and motherhood and all of the pieces of living.
Anabella: Yes, like you said, it's super important. Also, in this country, I'm thinking about who can afford to adopt. It’s insane.
Jennifer: It’s insane. I read today that 75% of adoptive parents are white and 75% of those waiting for adoption are black and brown children. It's so ridiculous, right? And adoption, like most things in this country, is a business. I say that as a person who has been blessed to be an adoptive mom, and I'm so grateful, and it's a fucking shit show. Sorry for all the cursing.
Anabella: How long did it take you to adopt? In Argentina, it’s around 3-4 years.
Jennifer: That's what most people say. We got so, so, so lucky. We put in our application in January of 2014 and we got matched in April, and our daughter was born in May. It's unheard of. We're an old white couple living in Brooklyn, we're artists, oh, and we had no money. But we got very, very, very, very, very lucky. Wow.
Anabella: Wow, and you as a female, as a leader, what are the values? You have a daughter and I have a son and a daughter, and it's different dialogues. I'm thinking about the lineage; your mother, yourself, and your daughter. What are the values that keep you strong at The Field, where there were majority white men in corporate America? How will you transfer how it is to be female in America to your daughter?
Jennifer: Well, one thing I want to say, and I've often said this about my dance career, is that I was a fine dancer. I wasn't great, I had a good career. I was good at certain things, but dancing gave me something that, as a woman in particular, I don't think I could have accessed any other way. So, particularly growing up as a white, upper-middle-class suburban, my parents weren't religious, but we were Christian –– by sort of practice or by lineage, but very waspy. No cultural rituals. No cultural traditions besides having a gin and tonic. Really good people, but in a certain way, the quintessential sort of white, American, upper middle class, disembodied, lack of cultural ritual and practice, unemotional, and kind of dry. Dance for me, and particularly once I stepped out of the ballet world, opened up my body, my heart opened up. I feel it completely changed the trajectory of what I was experiencing and how I could process it. I don't think I could have accessed that any other way. And it was spiritual and emotional, and physiological. That wasn't part of my family's language and practice. Dance absolutely gave me that.
Anabella: And are you sharing this with your daughter?
Jennifer: Yes, absolutely. That's one of the reasons why I wanted her to come to my going away party from The Field. I wanted her to understand the position of quote-unquote “power” that I had. When Yanira Castro did that thank-you immersive installation, I wanted my daughter to be present to that kind of practice. She's seen a few videos of me dancing. I try to share those values. She’s a writer. She's a storyteller. She's very deep into writing and that craft. She's also really in her body, she hasn’t developed an interest in dance as a practice and I don't want her to or need her to per se, but those values of, as a woman, being in your body, but also both of those kinds of aspects of the strength of dance, the athletic practice of dance and the heart, the creativity, the collaboration, the spirituality of it…the community of it. I think that comes to just who I am and how I pursue things.
Anabella: Oh yes, they see everything. They are sponges. You’ve heard the saying, “Our kids are our mirrors”? Can you share any anecdotes on this? I always share this anecdote: when my son was four years old, after I finished teaching a class, we went to the dressing room, and he told me, “Mama, I want to be a female.” And I looked at him like, what are you talking about? He said, “Because grandma tells you what to do. You tell the dancers what to do. You tell your students what to do.” So he wants to be a leader. He saw this with all of these matriarchal voices around him. Do you have any stories about how your daughter has reflected on you where you're thinking oh really, that's how you see me from outside?
Jennifer: I'll be honest. Nothing. I'm going to think about it more. Nothing is directly coming to my mind, but when you first talked about anecdotes and being a mom, one of the things that being a mom opened up for me… Like you said about Fiamma having a meltdown, right during one of your films, kids are open to their emotions. My daughter has real, big physical responses sometimes –– in an overly dramatic way with her whole body.
That reminder as a grownup, but also as a leader, that kind of rage, the beauty of that rage and that way that emotions are flying around your body and how much we are taught to sort of contain it, or I was taught to hold and contain it. That mirror for me, of watching her learn to process and feel those feelings and not be afraid of them, I'm learning a lot from just witnessing her and giving her space, that gives me space too.
Anabella: Absolutely. Absolutely. And especially as dancers, I am talking about how they mute us. As soon as you get into the dance studio, you cannot talk. You cannot ask questions. You cannot interrupt. You cannot hang on the barre. And as a teenager, it was like an explosion.
Jennifer: Explosions, yes. Just being an older parent, too. When do kids actually consciously understand their parents as external to them with these lives? My daughter did joke a while ago, because she was home because of COVID. She said to my husband, what is your work? Is it just computers, you sit there on the computers.It's interesting what they're taking in about who we are.
She loved to come to our office, The Field office. She loved to go there.
Anabella: All of the kids that want to know what the parents do for so many hours each day –– what it’s all about.
Thank you so much, Jennifer. It’s been wonderful to talk to you, and thank you for sharing your life experiences.
Jennifer: I'm so honored and I adore talking to you. You've been so great at The Field. It's been great to get to know you a little bit more in this way too. Thank you so much, and good luck to a great project!
Jennifer Wright Cook is a former dance theater performer, teacher and artist. She danced professionally with the Joe Goode Performance Group, Neil Greenberg, Sarah Skaggs and others and has shown her work in New York, San Francisco and Madrid. Jennifer has worked in arts administration for over 25 years, most recently as Executive Director of the arts service organization The Field (2006-2022). Currently she is the Board Member of New Yorkers for Culture and Arts, and Treasurer of Freedom Rising, a mom to her brilliant 8 year daughter, and an alto in her church’s gospel choir. Jennifer is pursuing work in her passion area of reproductive equity and justice.
Anabella Lenzu: Originally from Argentina, Anabella Lenzu is a dancer, choreographer, scholar & educator with over 30 years of experience working in Argentina, Chile, Italy, and the USA. Lenzu directs her own company, Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama (ALDD), which since 2006 has presented 400 performances, created 15 choreographic works, and performed at 100 venues, presenting thought-provoking and historically conscious dance-theater in NYC. As a choreographer, she has been commissioned all over the world for opera, TV programs, theatre productions, and by many dance companies. She has produced and directed several award-winning short dance films and screened her work in over 200 festivals both nationally and internationally.